is the bogey of this bar, not its actuality, that eventually wrecks the scheme of things. In both these books the English sympathiser with Indian political development finds himself faced with a kind of public school spirit, an attitude of mind which says, "There's no room for personal views. The man who doesn't toe the line is lost." Brian Riley, the journalist, and Fielding, the educationalist, pursue the same ideals; though the former develops them in discussion and reflection, the latter in action. At the club they hear and attempt to combat the views of the "sun-dried bureaucrat which are instilled into the newest comer and accepted as final. The delineation of the club habitués is handled tolerantly by Mr. Candler, but Mr. Forster is in less kindly vein. The latter's analysis of native character is remarkably penetrating -its frequent ineffectiveness and supineness, its suspicion and childishness, its sincere desire to do the right thing, its craving for sympathy, are unerringly drawn. An unemotional race is admirable for ruling and administering justice, but "truth is not truth in that exacting land, unless there go with it kindness and more kindness and kindness again." The loss of the old personal contact between rulers and ruled breeds more distrust. Candler sees only too clearly the effect to which the modern tendency of over civilisation and over administration is leading. His thoughts turned to the Himalayan Olympus, to young men in immaculate Jodhpur suits with gardenias in their buttonholes, content with the image of things, statistics, minutes, reports, cut off from the substance, cushioned and secure, far removed from life, its rough impacts, satisfied with themselves so long as they could make out a good case on paper. Mr. India a nation! at times the Indian intellectual dreams of it, at times he knows it to be impossible. Gandhism, self determination, home rule by instalments, industrialism, are making an upheaval of India that is adequately reflected in the pages of Mr. Candler and of Mr. Forster. Everywhere one finds cross currents—the half veiled hatred between Moslem and Hindu ; the autocracy of Native States that spurns Western ideas; the scorn of the northern chieftain for the native of the plains: "All the peoples of the earth have harried Bengal. It is written. Thou knowest when we of the north wanted women or plunder VOL. 242. NO. 494. V whither went we? To Bengal; where else?" Both books end on a note of uncertainty, disillusionment and partial reaction. Is it better, like Lucretius' philosopher, to stand aloof on the shore of this seething sea, to watch the far off heights rather than "descend into a valley whose farther side no man can see?" Sympathy; the will to serve and not to rule; friendship-these are but words that advance nothing unless the heart is changed. Idealism fades. The shrine that was half open has almost closed once more. PERISCOPE MACAULAY AND HASTINGS I. Life of Warren Hastings. By Rev. G. R. GLEIG. 2. 1841. Warren Hastings. By LORD MACAULAY. Edinburgh Review. October, 1841. 3. English Men of Action: Warren Hastings. By Sir ALFRED LYALL. 1889. 4. The Story of Nuncomar. By Sir JAMES FITZJAMES STEPHEN. 1885. 5. Life of Warren Hastings. By Colonel G. B. MALLESON. 1894. THE "HE trial of Warren Hastings is one of the most famous in English history; the acquittal in which it ended was, as Macaulay himself states, "generally approved"; and yet the verdict decided nothing about the actual facts in dispute. It required more than a century of controversy, and several learned and elaborate works, before there was any semblance of agreement, and even now the advocates of Hastings differ materially among themselves. There is a marked contrast between the words with which Sir Alfred Lyall and Colonel Malleson close their respective accounts of Hastings. The Indian politician writes: " It is no wonder that among the sundry and manifold difficulties of such a period, a man of his training and temper should have done things that are hard to justify and easy to condemn-for he was undoubtedly cast in the type, so constantly recurrent in political history, of the sons of Zeruiah, and he very nearly earned their historical reward." The soldier writest: "No nobler son ever devoted to his country's interests a life more pure, a prescience more profound, talents more commanding, than did the second founder of British India, the Right Honourable Warren Hastings." But however much those who now write on Hastings differ in degree of appreciation or in treatment of details, two general points stand out: they are agreed that Hastings was a very great man, and on the whole a good one, and that he was very hardly * Lyall. "Warren Hastings," p. 235. † Malleson. "Warren Hastings," p. 547 treated by his country; they are also agreed in unfavourably criticising Macaulay's Life of him, sometimes only by correction of details, more often with bitter accusations of partizan unfairness. Malleson speaks of the "distortions of Macaulay "; Vincent Smith depreciates his essay because he was "dazzled by the glare of Burke's eloquence, and biassed by the weight of Whig tradition"; the author of a deservedly popular school history of England goes even further and implies that Macaulay deliberately suppressed the truth."‡ It does not take much courage to kick a dead lion. In fact, the tables have been turned: Warren Hastings is acquitted, while Macaulay is indicted, with various degrees of bitterness, for prejudice, for historical incompetence, and even for actual bad faith. The acquittal of Hastings may be accepted gladly and without question, but the indictment of Macaulay may fairly be challenged as having gone much too far. In this centenary year of Macaulay as an essayist, may one who owes his knowledge and admiration of Hastings first to Macaulay, urge that the indictment be reconsidered? What it will be endeavoured to show is (1) that Macaulay's summing up was, considering the evidence before him, fair and justifiable, so far as Hastings is concerned; (2) that so far from being prejudiced against Hastings, Macaulay, in the most surprising way, cuts himself off from the prejudices of his time and party; and (3) that Hastings now owes his well-deserved reputation largely to the supposed attack made on him by the great Whig essayist. Before proceeding to state reasons for these contentions, two points must be emphasised-one of general interest, one of minor importance. The first is that, in fairness to Macaulay, it must be remembered that he (as a reviewer) did not conceive himself to be writing history in the strict sense. If it were necessary to prove this, the short and convincing argument is that his essays were *In describing the Rohilla War. Macaulay. Essay on Hastings ed. by Vincent Smith, p. 1. Fletcher's "Introductory History of England," vol. IV., p. 145, in speaking of the trial of Nuncomar: "The worst of it is that Macaulay had every opportunity of knowing the facts, and probably did actually know them." his main almost his entire-literary output till early in 1843,* when, with many doubts of their success and almost by compulsion, he published his Collected Essays; after this he wrote only those on Barère, on Addison, and on the later years of Chatham. It is true that, as late as the beginning of 1845, he wrote to Napiert to assure him that he still meant to contribute to the EDINBURGH, but he never did so; his experience at last taught him that, unlike Southey, he could not do two kinds of literary work at the same time. But the best proof of Macaulay's views on the difference between essays and history, is his letter to Napier, written in 1842.§ There, it is true, he is only defending the comparative lightness of style in an essay; but the same respect for history certainly marked Macaulay's view of the evidence required for it; the long and laborious research that was spent before the first two volumes of his history appeared in 1848, is a striking contrast to the daring vigour which threw off his Essays in the scanty leisure of parliamentary or Indian life. The point of minor importance is that no defence of the essay on Hastings can extend to the treatment of Sir Elijah Impey. The bitter Whig partizan tradition against Hastings, Macaulay could examine, because, whatever else he was, he never was a "Little Englander," and he appreciated to the full the greatness of the Governor-General. But Impey was not a great man, nor even an interesting one, and so Macaulay let loose on him a rhetoric which can almost be compared to that of Burke against Hastings. One thing only need be urged about this unfairness; Sir James Stephen says,|| "It is to be regretted that Macaulay should never have noticed " the Life of Impey by his son; but Macaulay thought it undesirable to reply to attacks even on his History,** on which he had lavished his time, for which he had sacrificed health and society and political prospects. Could he have been expected to notice a "confused, clumsily contrived *"Life of Lord Macaulay," by Sir G. O. Trevelyan (1878), II., 112-3, 126. † Ib. II., 163. Ib., II., 128. § Ib., II., 108. "The Story of Nuncomar." I., 7. **"Life of Lord Macaulay." II., 243, 463, et pass. By Sir G. O. Trevelyan (1878), |